This invention relates to the foundation and stem wall arrangement involved in the placement and setup of mobile homes and the like, and more particularly to a novel, simplified foundation and stem wall method and system which avoids a substantial portion of the labor-intensive construction aspects and time involved in the heretofore conventional site preparation preliminary to placement and setup of a mobile home.
As is well known in the art, mobile homes are factory-manufactured homes typically comprising two or more individual units which are each built on a trailable frame that allows for their ground transport from the factory to a desired homesite location where the individual units are set in place and connected together into their completed, finished, home. Since each unit of these homes is built on its own supporting frame, the mobile home does not require the same type of load-bearing foundation wall and footing construction that is required in conventional site-built homes which most people are readily familiar with. Nonetheless, it has been conventional in the art to provide peripheral stem walls for mobile homes using substantially the same construction method and techniques used for site-built homes simply for the lack of any other better or more cost and labor-effective alternative to the standard practice.
In the normal site preparation practice, a desired building site would be plotted and excavated as required for the construction of perimeter concrete footing forms to be constructed and foundation wall footings poured. Conventional concrete wall forms are then erected on the footings and the concrete walls poured; the concrete forms later being removed and the outer periphery being backfilled to specified grade. A concrete foundation slab is then poured within the excavated inner confines of the concrete perimeter wall, the slab being arranged for receiving and providing a supporting foundation base pad for the setup of the mobile home units as is standard practice. With the mobile home setup completed, the aforementioned concrete foundation and pad form an enclosing crawl space beneath the mobile home, while the outside periphery of the mobile home, once backfilled and finished to proper grade level, resembles, for all intent and purposes, the appearance of a site-built home.
From the foregoing however, it is readily apparent that the preparation and construction of the foundation pad and concrete skirting encompasses an unduly substantial amount of concrete work not unlike that of a conventional site-built house even though the concrete wall and footing structure is not a load-bearing supporting element for a mobile home structure. Accordingly, a need exists in the marketplace for a more time and cost-efficient method and system for providing the concrete foundation and skirting for mobile homes which are to be set at great level to simulate the appearance of a typical site-built home construction.